So lately - while I try to avoid writing and the guilt of not writing - I've been burning out my brain with Call of Duty 4.

I like shooters. They are the insta-high of games. You run around on tiny little maps for a few minutes shooting dozens of virtual people who are shooting at you. It's pure positive feedback-loop once you get good at it. Very much a high.

By the way, I'm all PC gaming, so the whole consoles-are-fun-too thing eludes me.

I've been dreaming like I'm in the game. I've been dreaming about planting claymores and tossing grenades and never, ever being able to get my bullets to go where I'm aiming. Not nightmares, but just horribly awkward dreams of failure.

Anyone else have the same sort of experience? The whole, your brain is stuck in a virtual world at night, like it's fucking sure as hell you really, really need to reprocess the eight hours of gaming you just put in? Cause, you know, if it wasn't important enough to dream about why did you bother in the first place?

My brain doesn't seem to realize I need to reprocess the weak character arcs of my latest shebang.

I too have been down the Call of Duty 4 hole for a couple weeks now. It is my morning stimulant. Well, there is coffee too. The 40 minutes of balls out violence is the perfect thing to get the adrenaline flowing and psych me up for a day of work. If you can start your day by getting 7 consecutive kills and calling in a helicopter strike on your enemies, the frustrations of the commute are that much easier to take.

Alas, my nights are rarely intruded upon by gaming dreams anymore- mostly just the vague sense that the baby is crying- waking up to silence, and repeating 2 or 3 more times. I wish I could game enough consecutive hours to bludgeon my subconscious mind into gaming mode.

I spent about a month of my sleep life living in DOOM back in 94 or thereabouts but I was doing a lot of psychedelics back then. More often these days I'll have the structure and flaws of a game's interface pop into completely normal dreams. It can be very frustrating when you mind is trying to micromanage assets in a completely unstructured dream environment. I had Battlefield2 dreams a couple of times when i first bought the game.

And COD4 is fantastic. I just this week upgraded my vid card to a GeForce8600GTS from a 7300 and it is a whole new world. That game, playable and entertaining before, is now like teleporting into a real place. When I have the time I plan to see how this new setup runs Gears of War and Crysis.

Last time I did LSD, I thought I was in the Grim Fandango afterlife. That was a lot of fun.

Otherwise, I rarely have gaming dreams. It happens more with PC RPGs. Lately I've been having Star Wars dreams of revealing how fucking evil the Jedi are, because I've been playing Lego Star Wars 2 and Knights of the Old Republic.

I've heard a lot of good things about Call of Duty, and managed to not know it was out for PC and not just the 360. Looks like I should look into playing that because Steam will not take my money when I try to buy HL2:Ep2 or portal which I hear is short but good.

<em>Call of Duty 4</em> is one of the best feats of story-telling in gaming to happen since <em>Half-Life 2</em>. It also has a few interesting issues relating to how we handle war media, especially the image of modern warfare, brought up as well alongside its political stance, and is all the more successful in these regards for not bashing your head over with them, focusing on the entertainment and involvement it rewards you with. I suppose what I'm saying is: If you're hesitant about this one because it seems like a Clancy-esque, "our boys" kind of game, I can assure you it isn't. It's a blockbuster with a point, and Infinity Ward got all the lessons from Valve right. It's good to see people in the industry who know what they're doing and are being genuinely progressive and smart with their material in the main light.

>use computer with the internetsYou write a post about how your friend told you that he always has that dream about running through a house full of zombies; always ascending higher and higher until he reaches the roof where he is totally surrounded by zombies; and that is always where he's out of ammunition and finally awakes, soaked in sweat, fearing to fall asleep again. Like a computer game he simply can not win. You also mention that you thaught that this was awesome, but still are quite happy that it was him who got the dreams, and you that plays the games>_

Yeah. Life should definitly be an adventure. I'd love the "save, try, reload" feature :)

Oh god. I've had zombie dreams at least three times in the past few years. That shit is awful. One time I actually woke up screaming. Scared the shit out of my then-girlfriend. Usually spend half the morning still feeling terrified and hopeless.

I used to have DOOM-fueled nightmares, back when I played it for hours on end. DOOM mixed with the "Alien" movies, to be precise; along with the creeping dread of being perpetually low on ammo and overrun and outnumbered on all sides by something eons old and practically invulnerable. Something about inevitability.

I find that if I don't meditate 10 minutes a day (which I haven't done for quite some times now) I often dream about the games I've been playing in some bizare amalgamation with everything else I do.

After Bioshock I constantly dreamt of being stuck in a Post-Bad Ending world. It was pretty embarassing. And for some reason I'm never the hero. I always end up being cannon fodder or just not being able to do it properly. I'm afraid of what that says about me.

Almost every dream I remember involves zombies - either kicking ass Bruce Campbell style, or being helpless and surrounded by an infinite horde. Although there was one non-zombie dream where I could quicksave my life. That was a good one.

Man, what I wouldn't give to have dreams about video games instead of just dreams about me falling to my death... Which could be video game related, I guess...

The closest "gaming that's affecting my reality" experience I've ever had was this one time that I had to keep reminding myself that I'm not in GTA III, I can't drive erratically... while I was driving.